FX’s Fargo was perhaps the most surprising debut of 2014, and one of the best shows of the TV season. It took a questionable premise — a television adaptation of the Coen Brothers’ film — and turned it into a completely new story filled with rich characters, beautiful cinematography, and nail-biting tension. The show, which will vie for an Emmy as a miniseries, was recently renewed for a ten-episode second season. At the TCA Press Tour, Fargo creator Noah Hawley revealed plenty of details about Season 2, which is set to air in 2015. Here is everything we know so far.
Noah Hawley Will Return as Showrunner
Hawley, who is credited with penning every episode of the first season, will return as Fargo‘s writer-producer. However, during the Fargo panel, he said he won’t write all of the episodes for this season, opting instead to share duties with the other four writers. But there’s no need to panic — Hawley also said that he used a writers’ room during Season 1, so presumably the quality will be just as great.
There Will Be an Entirely New Cast
This much we already knew before Fargo even got renewed. Early in the show’s run, Hawley said that if the show were to return for Season 2, the intention would be to start over, much like True Detective and American Horror Story. Unlike AHS, however, Hawley has no plans to bring back any of the actors from Season 1 — not even fan favorite Allison Tolman. “It gets hard to look past the actors,” Hawley said at TCA. “I like the idea that the character comes first and hopefully the actor disappears into the role.”
Lou Solverson Will Return
Though Keith Carradine won’t return — Hawley joked, “We’re going to CG old Keith Carradine performances” — his character, Lou Solverson, will. Season 2 will jump back in time to 1979, taking place in a post-Vietnam era, after a 33-year-old Lou returns from the war. Hawley further elaborated, “Lou Solverson is a state police officer. His wife Betsy, her dad is the sheriff of Rock County.” He also mentioned that Lou’s father-in-law is a character, and hinted that we might even find out what happened to Molly’s mother.
Season 2 Will Take Place in Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The most common prediction for Fargo‘s second season was that it would take place in Sioux Falls, based on the numerous references to an incident there. In Season 1’s “A Fox, a Rabbit, and a Cabbage,” there is a great diner scene in which Lou talks to Malvo and recalls a massacre that happened in Sioux Falls: “Probably if you stacked [the bodies] high, could’ve climbed to the second floor. I saw something that year I ain’t ever seen before or ever since. I’d call it animal except animals only kill for food.” Even earlier in the season, in Episode 3, Lt. Schmidt (who will factor in to Season 2) expresses a fear that Gus’ screw-up will be “goddamn Sioux Falls all over again.” It’s already looking like Season 2 will shed even more blood than the first.
There Are Even More Hints in Season 1
“If you were paying attention to Season 1, we made a lot of references to Sioux Falls,” Hawley said. It looks like Hawley’s been planning out Season 2 from the beginning, and the Sioux Falls references weren’t the only deliberate hints about future plots. “There were a lot of clues left in the first season and we’ll do our best to hit those,” he added. If you want even more clues as to the show’s direction, Hawley also name-dropped two films in addition to Fargo: Miller’s Crossing and The Man Who Wasn’t There.
Everything Is Connected
If you recall, Fargo took a sharp detour early in the first season and tied its narrative together with the film. While the jump in time confuses the references to the film somewhat, Hawley says it’s all connected somehow:
“I like the idea that somewhere out there is a big, leather-bound book that’s the history of true crime in the Midwest, and the movie was Chapter 4, Season 1 was Chapter 9 and this is Chapter 2,” he says. “You can turn the pages of this book, and you just find this collection of stories. … But I like the idea that these things are connected somehow, whether it’s linearly or literally or thematically. That’s what we play around with.”